There are so many aspects to agile, and it’s really important to understand what they are all about and why each of them are necessary. Some are structural, or procedural - things like having a very disciplined cadence of times when teams come together, or having really well defined set of objectives and expected results within a defined period of time. The structure allows teams to build upon their work in a repeatable and incremental way, and means that massive programmes of work can be broken down into much smaller and more manageable chunks.

Many people go through life not knowing what they want or what success looks like to them. Sadder than that, many people go through life working to someone else’s goal, to fulfil someone else’s dream. That’s ok, if you are a “go-with-the-flow kind of person”, but not ok if you actually want to be in control of your own destiny. Once you’ve managed to find your goal, there still is a heck of a lot of work to do to actually make it happen. As with most things, our mind gets in the way and creates barriers to our success - it’s a mechanism designed to protect us and keep us safe, but annoyingly, it also prevents us from taking bigger risks and making bigger leaps. It puts the brakes on us choosing hard over easy, risk over safety, and effort over ease. This safety mechanism can manifest itself as lots of things (fear, blame, avoidance, excuses, and many more).

Being able to separate the task from your immediate personal ownership (and a feeling of obligation) is a great way to see where choice exists and to open up a whole new world of possibility.

When it comes to career advice, I often hear people say “do something you love”, or “follow your dreams”. That might sound a little cliché, (and more like one of those quotes you see on a background of pristine mountains and trees in an Instagram post) as opposed to actual solid career advice. Here’s why it’s actually great advice.

Employees have embraced new technologies, new tools, and new ways of thinking. Employees have developed new mechanisms for social support and connection, and experimented with new ways of collaborating. Organisations who have historically railed against flexible or remote working have had no choice but to embrace these new ways of working, or face the prospect of little to no work being done, and limited business being able to take place. It’s disruption at it’s finest, and within disruption comes the opportunity to grow something new - something better - something more appropriate for the world we live in today.

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and had the feeling that the other person isn’t actually listening to a word you are saying? They are patiently waiting for you to stop saying your piece, and then — BLAM! — they say their piece. This is much less of a conversation - let alone a kōrero - and much more like a game of tag.

When we break down daily tasks into their essence they generally fall into two buckets — work for the business or work in the business.This is why being customer-centric can be incredibly hard for people in complex organisations. When we look at the root cause of our confusion we find its foundations sit in the understanding of what is for the business yet we normally focus on what is in the business by focusing on serving our stakeholders, colleagues and higher-ups instead of our customers because our boss pays us and holds the strings to our next promotion.

As a designer in a world of non-designers, I get people asking me to help with their presentations. They want me to help arrange the information beautifully on the slide or create a beautiful image.The first thing I ask them is “why are you doing this presentation?” and they answer, “They (the audience) need to know about [insert topic]”.Nine times out of ten the answer is either “they need to know ‘’ or “they should know”. Unfortunately, adults have free-will and limited capacity of caring on any given day. So why should they use their free-will and precious caring capacity on you?“Because it’s important” - quote from every person doing a presentation ever.Before you respond “because it’s important” ask yourself — who is it important to and why?

Bottom line is this. If you can see something, and other people can’t (or won’t) see it, then it’s always the right thing to call it out. Politely. With care. With love. With respect. The intention of giving feedback must always be that you care about the other person; That you care about better outcomes for you, them, the organisation, and everyone around them.

One on ones don’t need to be a chore. I often hear from leaders that they struggle to get themselves motivated to have the repetitive weekly or monthly 1:1 conversation with their teams… and worse still, it feels like they are compelled to have them. I’ve been asked by leaders for templates for great 1:1s… and been shown templates for conversation flows that provide a rigid structure and boundaries for the conversation.